One of the more gratifying aspects of my job is hearing from former students about how they have used what they have learned, and—even better—how they have been inspired to learn more and improve on their own. So it really made my day recently when David Cheng, Director of Engineering at Qualcomm in Shanghai, wrote to tell me about the progress he has been making in Toastmasters; so much so, that I asked him to write a guest post. I hope David’s post will in turn inspire others to challenge themselves to become better and more confident speakers:
I have always had the problem of speaking on the stage. Off the stage, I could talk easily even with a group of strangers. I didn’t realize the seriousness of this problem until I took Jack’s presentation class. The last task for the training was to prepare a speech to the executives. I picked a topic that I was very familiar with. I thought the 5 minute speech wasn’t going to be too hard.
Surprise! My mind blanked out when I was up there!! At the end of the class, I asked Jack how I could resolve this. He suggested the Toastmasters International. I decided to give it a try.
After surveying a number of clubs, I picked a conveniently located corporate club. The friendly setting really helped to ease the nervousness. However, I still had the problem of speaking out on the stage. It wasn’t until my 8th project in which I partnered with another Toastmaster that I felt like I wasn’t speaking on the stage.
I also didn’t script the talk, but only remembered the key points. From this, I learned that too much pressure and too much worry about being “correct” caused a commotion in my head that I forgot what to say.
In addition, I also found the evaluation role that Toastmasters program was very beneficial to mitigate my problem. It reminded me of Jack’s Precision Questioning class I took some time ago. Picking the good points and bad points of other’s speech required critical thinking. The exercise helped when I did my own speech. It was like reading vs proof-reading. When one presented, everything seemed logical to the speaker but that might not be what the audience perceived. Only when one heightened self-awareness and listened to oneself while speaking would the person be able to refine his or her talk through rehearsal. Being an evaluator helps developing that skill. This is the part that I am working on now.
Eventually, I hope to answer table topic questions with ease. The impromptu speech is very demanding. It requires one to think on his or her feet, organizing what he or she wants to say with supporting material on the spot. It all comes down to practice and preparedness. I have asked many fellow Toastmasters how they do the table topic so well. In fact, they thought about what could be asked before the meeting. Practice does make perfect.
All in all, the whole experience improves my technical skill, personality and point of view. I am a better speaker and thinker, more affable and articulate, and view things with wider mind. I have to thank Jack and the Toastmasters. More to Jack because without his encouragement and trainings, I would not be a successful Toastmaster.
In the quest for artificial intelligence, the holy grail is the Turing test, in which a computer is able to “converse” in such a way that an average person can’t tell whether it is human or machine.
Just yesterday, the University of Reading claimed that its supercomputer called Eugene Goostman had passed the test, although a lot of people are not convinced.
I’m not qualified to comment on whether or not the computer did pass, ask but I have observed many presentations where the presenter would be hard pressed to pass the Turing test, and I am sure you have too.
- When a presentation is so generic that it can apply to any audience and anyone could deliver it, it’s tough to prove that a human wrote it.
- When the presentation is so sanitized by the marketing and legal departments that any spark of humanity is extinguished, a computer may have written it.
- When the presenter insists on reading the slides to the audience, it’s clear that a machine is in control.
- When the speaker makes no personal connection with individual audience members, it could be a humanoid up there speaking.
- When the speaker is unable to interact with the audience and adjust in midstream as necessary, it’s tough to prove there’s a real person behind the podium.
Do your presentations show your personality? Do they engage your listeners’ hearts as well as their minds? Could they pass the Turing test?
Winston Churchill was a poor student as a boy, so he was placed in the lowest form, what today we would call remedial or special education. Here’s what he said about the experience in his autobiography: My Early Life, 1874-1904:
“[B]y being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell — a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great — was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing — namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. . . Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence — which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for would be not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.”
That story shows how being “deprived” can make you better at the fundamentals, and it applies equally in our high-tech world.
Technology is a wonderful thing which can bring tremendous improvements to how we do things – but at the price of losing fundamental skills. Reading a map and figuring out how to get to a strange address is a lost skill thanks to GPS, for example. It works great, until your phone dies halfway there. And watching younger people try to figure out a tip without a calculator is always a source of amusement.
Another example is the effect of presentation software on presentations. I feel lucky that I learned the essentials of public speaking and presenting in the early 80s. Before 1987, humanity had not been graced with PowerPoint, so we had to learn how to structure an argument, keep an audience’s attention on ourselves, and paint verbal pictures. We actually had to learn our material, because no one wanted to suffer the dishonor of reading from index cards. We looked people in the eye more, and we learned how to add, subtract or modify content depending on how we sensed the audience was reacting.
If you were born too late to escape the pull of PowerPoint, there’s still hope, which I’ve discovered through PowerPoint deprivation experiments I’ve run during my last four presentation training sessions.
The trick is to keep your laptop closed until the last possible moment. It’s similar to advice you’ve heard before, to begin analog and finish digital: figure out your key message and craft a rough draft of your presentation on paper (sticky notes and index cards are especially helpful for trying out different arrangements), and then rehearse it at least once before you even begin to think about your slides.
Creating your message without the distraction of choosing fonts and images, making your case without having a memory crutch, and hearing your own words out loud is extremely valuable preparation. It is a great test of your overall message and delivery. Then when you have the solid structure in place, you can add the cherry on top in the form of jazzy pictures.
It’s still a small sample size, but the sessions I’ve run so far show that the approach makes a significant difference in quality. The key difference in this approach is that your presentations are PowerPoint-enhanced, rather than PowerPoint-based. It makes you thoroughly learn your material, which builds both credibility and confidence, and it puts you back in your rightful place – controlling the presentation, not being controlled by it.
As a presentation trainer I lack one advantage that the English schoolmasters had: I can’t whip my students. But if I could, the only thing I would whip them for would be the inability to deliver a cogent and compelling presentation without slides. I would whip them very hard for that.
Practical Eloquence strives to keep you abreast of the latest cutting edge science on persuasion, so here goes: Two recent articles about eye contact reveal the amazing power that it has for persuasion, on the one hand, as well as a surprising study that reveals its limitations.
An article in the New York Times called “Psst. Look Over Here”, revealed several fascinating facts about the powerful feelings of connection that eye contact can generate. Did you know that the brains of legally blind people light up when someone looks them in the eye? Did you know that in one study subjects were more likely to choose Trix cereal if the rabbit was looking at them that if it was looking away? Another study at Northwestern University found that doctors with more eye contact had better patient outcomes, probably because their patients were more likely to follow their advice and to seek treatment for subsequent problems.
Information like this reinforces the persuasive power of maintaining eye contact during presentations and conversations. But before you get too carried away, you might want to take a look (no pun intended) at recent research by Frances Chen and others that found more eye contact to be associated with less persuasion, when the listener is skeptical to begin with. One of the researchers says, “Whether you’re a politician or a parent, it might be helpful to keep in mind that trying to maintain eye contact may backfire if you’re trying to convince someone who has a different set of beliefs than you.” The theory is that skeptical listeners might view eye contact as challenging or an attempt at intimidation.
So, are there times when less eye contact is better? It might seem like a reasonable possibility, but before rushing to conclusion
I don’t have access to the full study, but I did note from the abstract that the study involved subjects watching the eyes of a speaker on video, not a live speaker. Is that a serious limitation? It’s up to you to decide, but I’m not yet prepared to advocate keeping your eyes averted even in difficult conversations.
